If you’re a teacher in the Northeast dreading those last days in June that were tacked on because of the snow days during this interminable winter, or if even if you’re a teacher in a sunny locale who needs some fresh ideas in the classroom, YARN’s Teach section has just what you need!

Education Coordinator Bradley Philbert has designed two excellent new lesson plans based on YARN writing published in the last year–writing by authors like John Cusick and Francisco Stork and Lyn Miller-Lachmann, whose novels your students may well have read, and writing by teens and aspiring writers just like them. The up-to-dateness of the writing on YARN is always a draw for young people, and we hope it will help make writing and reading feel as vital to them as it does to us.

One lesson plan taps into the role of setting–specifically Japan–in YA literature generally, and in two YARN short stories specifically: “YARN Visits Japan.” The other, “Making Readers Feel Pain,” is about the ways in which writers have represented pain in several recent essays we’ve published. Both lessons ask your students to deeply analyze complex pieces of writing, and think creatively about how to respond to them.

As always, we encourage you and your students to respond to our suggested prompts, revise, and submit their/your work to YARN.

And watch out for our National Poetry Month project in April–a poem prompt a day, which can help you break out of your classroom doldrums with quick, easy, low-stakes creative exercises.

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What Is YARN?

It's a brilliant thing to have a place where you can read fresh original short stories by both seasoned YA authors and aspiring teens. YARN is a great tool box for growing up writing.- Cecil Castellucci

Imagine. Envision. Write. Revise. Submit. Read.

YARN is an award-winning literary journal that publishes outstanding original short fiction, poetry, and essays for Young Adult readers, written by the writers you know and love, as well as fresh new voices...including teens.

We also believe in feedback, which is why we encourage readers to post comments on pieces that inspire thought, emotion, laughter...or whatever.